Market for Seahawks sale is ‘robust,' report says. Here's latest timeline
A week after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the market for the Seahawks is better than has been reported, another report surfaced backing up that claim.
NFL insider Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network said Wednesday that he has been told the market "has been robust and has "picked up steam" of late.
Rapoport further speculated that with the way things are trending he "would not be surprised at all if there is a special meeting among NFL owners this coming August" when the approval of a sale could be made.
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He also speculated that the price of the team "if all goes perfectly well could eclipse $10 billion."
All seem to jibe with Goodell's remarks at the NFL meetings last week when the commissioner disputed an earlier ESPN report about the market being soft, saying: "It's exactly the opposite. There's actually been tremendous interest in the team.
Still, each statement raises the question of who the other parties interested in the team may be.
Only two names of potential new owners have surfaced, both initially reported by Sportico.com as each in the process of preparing to make a bid.
One is a group that would be led by two current alternate governors of the Boston Celtics - Wyc Grousbeck and Aditya Mittal. Mittal is the son of Indian businessman and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. It's been reported Grousbeck, whose family was the primary owner of the Celtics from 2002-24, would be the face of the ownership group.
The other is Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who last year along with his son Neal bought a 3.1% share of the San Francisco 49ers.
Speculation all along has been the Seahawks could fetch at least $9 billion, which would be a vast jump from the current NFL team sale record of $6.05 billion, which came during the 2023 sale of the Washington Commanders.
Last week, a 25% share of the Las Vegas Raiders was sold at a valuation of $9.9 billion while a 10% share of the Cleveland Browns was also approved for sale to a private equity firm at a valuation of $9 billion.
Each seem to further point to the Seahawks being valued in the $9-10 billion range.
Certainly, the league hopes the Seahawks will go for $10 billion or more. It would help to further clarify and reset the market for valuations, both for small shares - which are increasingly becoming available after the league in 2024 approved allowing private equity firms to buy up to 10% of teams, giving clubs a ready avenue for some quick cash - and for franchises as a whole.
As for when a sale could happen, the Seahawks and NFL hope it will occur by the start of the 2026 regular season.
The league has typically tried to take care of the business of sales during the offseason.
The league has no formal meetings scheduled again until October, so a special meeting would have to be called to approve a sale beforehand. The league did something similar in 2023 when it called a special meeting for late July to approve the sale of the Commanders and also called a special meeting to approve the sale of the Broncos in August 2022. The league undoubtedly hopes for a similar timeline for the Seahawks.
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This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 4:52 PM.